Contested Community: Case Study of a Mixed-Income Development in a Gentrifying Neighborhood

Background and Purpose: Mixed-income developments are being across the country as a strategy to address poverty and rebuild communities in the inner city. Mixed-income development aims to attract middle-income families to the site of former public housing developments, while retaining a portion of the low-income population, by demolishing the buildings and rebuilding high quality housing. The city of Chicago has been the site of an unprecedented public-private sector partnership since 1999, through which all high-rise public housing developments across the city have been demolished and ten new mixed-income developments have been built. The new developments are home to owners and renters, and include a mix of market-rate, affordable, and public housing units. One view of mixed- income developments is that they are about more than building quality housing: they are about rebuilding urban neighborhoods. This paper investigates the community building processes in one mixed-income development located in a gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago. I apply urban community theories of the contested neighborhood to this new development, exploring the expectations, strategies and responses to community building in a mixed-race and mixed-income context.

Methods: This qualitative study incorporates data from in-depth interviews, field observations, and a review of documentary data concerning mixed-income developments. A total of 52 interviews were conducted over two waves of data collection, including panels of both resident and stakeholder key informants. Interviews were guided by a semi-structured interview instrument comprised primarily of open-ended questions. Interviews were coded for analysis based on a set of deductively derived thematic codes and refined based on inductive interim analysis. Documentary data and data from 212 structured observations of community meetings, programs, events, and interactions, allow the interview data to be contextualized. This analysis is part of a larger study at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration through a grant provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Results: The analysis finds there are strong tensions around the use of public space and the expectations for behavior and social norms. Newer owners organized to gain police, alderman and city government resources, that benefited the interests of the owners. Community associations and service providers within the neighborhood faced increasing contention with new homeowners whose interests differed from existing low-income residents for whom the organizations served. Service providers have different expectations about their roles for helping “build community” among residents in the new development. For some, the dominant approach seems to be to focus on maintaining social order and minimizing tensions between neighbors. Others are considering ways to create programmatic and organizational venues that provide opportunities for relationship-building across racial and class divisions.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings suggest that service providers in gentrifying neighborhoods could make lasting contributions in generating and managing opportunities for the building of community in the new developments. Venues and activities that bring people together across racial, income and family composition divisions could serve a vital purpose in residents to organize around shared issues with the long-term goal of decreasing neighborhood conflict.